Word of Salvation – Vol. 15 No.24 - June 1969

 

“It Is I, Myself...!”

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. deGraaf, B.D. on Lord’s Day 1

SCRIPTURE READING: Isaiah 40:1-11, Psalm 23 (esp.vs.4)

PSALTER HYMNAL: 303:1,2,4; 428:1,2; 129:1,2; 129:3; 129:4

 

Brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus!

"What is YOUR only comfort, both in life and death?"

That's a very PERSONAL question.

It needs a PERSONAL answer.

Your answer, and MY answer?

Yes.

But there is One Who answered it first.  For us.  Whose answer may be in our hearts and in our ears this day and forever.  Because before we could speak, before we could say anything, God was there, God I S there, God, the Saviour and Comforter, God, in Jesus Christ our Lord.

This Heidelberg Catechism, you know, is written as a book for TEACHING.  A book containing what the Church believes.  But it has become more than that.  It has become an ECHO.  The echo of God's own speaking in His wonderful Word.  Therefore it has had a place in the Church all these centuries.  Therefore that Catechism still does its job today in this world and in this church and to these people.

We hear in it the pleadings and the promises of the very Word of God.  For the very question with which it starts is already from the Word of God: "WHAT IS YOUR ONLY COMFORT BOTH IN LIFE AND DEATH?"  So that's what we need!?  That's what God offers?  Comfort?

That does mean then, that life is often HARD, BITTER, NOT AS WE HOPED IT TO BE.  Oh, we young people sometimes think that of course we need a bit of that COMFORT when we die, but my, that's still a fair bit away from us, we still have plenty of time before THAT problem becomes ours!  And perhaps now and then we have the idea that life is nice, we do our jobs and earn our money and we live in a beautiful country and enjoy our family life, so what's that talk about comfort all about?

Yes, that's what we SOMETIMES say.  But there are those among us, who KNOW that not only in death, but also in LIFE they need comfort.  Who know what GRIEF is, and SORROW.  And there are quite a few of them in the world today.  And you can't help them any more with some cheap words or with some fun and with saying that it isn't all that bad.... what they need is COMFORT.

There are those in the world to-day who know what FEAR is.  FEAR for what may come, in their own family life or in the life of their country, or even in the life of our whole world.  And you can't push that FEAR away from somebody just by saying that "he's a jolly good fellow," for what does THAT help?  It doesn't show him the way out!  There are those that are frustrated because they feel sorry for things they should have done, but now it's too late.

There are those that worry about their children, and there are those that have trouble about their spouse, or their parents.  Death is in our lives, and sorrow, and fear, and who can just sit up and say the magic word?  We people can only make it worse for one another: if there's anyone really in sorrow, we leave him alone for we know not how to comfort.  That was so in the days of Job, when the friends came, only to make his troubles bigger, and that still holds today.

Oh yes, I know: to say we need comfort doesn't sound very optimistic.  But who is optimistic in the world today?

Life and death: they look like two big dark forests, through which there seems to be no path.  We don't know how to die and... we don't know how to live.  That is what you can hear around you if you have your ears open.  You hear it in the tears as well in the songs that are no music but just a scream.  You hear it through the newspaper headlines and in the talk with teenagers or just in the way people are, at your work.

There is one big need today, one great want: No words please, no cheap solutions, no more technical toys, no more vain promises....!  The want is for COMFORT!  For PEACE, for the RAY OF LIGHT!  For the KEY to death and just the same: the KEY HOW TO LIVE!

Brothers and sisters, the Bible says, GOD says, that this one only thing that can give us PEACE back, IS there: The glorious 40^th chapter of Isaiah we just read starts with JUST that thing:

"‘COMFORT YE, COMFORT YE my people......' saith your God, "Speak to the heart of Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins."

This is the comfort the Bible tells about: that God no more fills our hands with the THINGS of life to be glad with: that will not do any more.

Listen to verse 9:
            "O Zion that bringest good tidings,
            "O Jerusalem that tellest good tidings,
            "Lift up your voice and tell THIS message
                        to the world and to your own children:
            "BEHOLD, YOUR GOD!"
            "BEHOLD, YOUR GOD!"

This is the comfort the Bible tells you about, you find it in Isaiah 66:13: "As one whom his mother comforteth so will I comfort you!"  And for the little boys and girls: if there's REAL trouble, no toy, no candy, no THING will dry the tears, in the blackness of the night there's only one thing the crying child can get rest from: "that Mother IS THERE HERSELF and says: "fear not, IT IS I" and that the child may HIDE itself at mother's breast.

That is comfort.  And that is the comfort YOUR GOD offers to you.  He in great and understandable love and pity gives HIMSELF, gives HIS SON, He becomes our IMMANUEL: "God with us".  No more am I to cry alone in the darkness of the night, the night of my sin and the sins of the world, sin with its bitter consequences and its stinging pain, but God who comforts more than a mother comforts, said: "Here am I, I am yours, and you may be Mine!"

Oh, how well in these days can we understand Isaiah's words: "The voice said: "Cry!"  ""what shall I cry?"  "all flesh is grass and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of the field.  "the grass withereth, the flower fadeth...!"  How hard is this!  How powerless and helpless we people stand at the moments that our fellow-men have to face this!  The world is so full of misery that we even can become hard and emotionless towards it ourselves.  Sympathy doesn't help us a bit!  No, but here is more!  HERE IS COMFORT!  This is the wonder of the Message of the Bible: God comes and does it Himself!  He comforts us – WITH HIMSELF!  Immanuel!  God with us.

            Jesus in our dark world!

            Jesus at our bedsides,

            Jesus at our graves,

            Jesus stretching out His Own hand,
                        to touch, to heal, to take the STING away,
                        with HIS OWN BLOOD paying for MY sins, for YOUR sins,
                         so that in all circumstances you may say "FATHER" to God again!

So that THIS ALMIGHTY God looks after you even to the extent that NO HAIR can fall from your head, and IF He allows a hair to fall, or worse,.... then still there is He, Himself: Jesus, Himself, SO CLOSE BY, saying:
            "Nothing can separate you from MY love, child!"
            "All things must work for your good, my child!"
            "You don't understand, but I know why!  I love you!  my child!"

THAT is comfort!  The Lord Jesus does not leave that to any other or to any THING!  Not even to our WIFE or our CHILD, or our HUSBAND.  His Comfort is He, Himself!  Given for us, Coming down to us, right in our lives, He Who wept at Lazarus' grave, But also: HE Who took YOU OUT OF YOUR GRAVE".  Dying for you that you may be children of God.  So that – YET – you may find back the song of praise:

"If then GOD be for us, who can be against us?"

That is the comfort of God!  He does not leave us alone.  He makes us to be sure!  Sure that we have Him!  Sure that we may belong to Him!  Sure that He looks after us, even if we do not understand His ways, Sure that we will get there.  Sure that we H A V E eternal life!

 Therefore God comes to us with PERSONAL questions: "What is YOUR only comfort both in life and in death."  It is no more Christian, it's even not Christian at all then to say: "Oh well, I don't know, I do HOPE that later on I'll become assured a bit more...!  For Paul says that "THE SPIRIT WITNESSES WITH OUR SPIRIT THAT WE ARE CHILDREN OF GOD THROUGH WHOM WE CRY 'ABBA, FATHER...!”

And it is the miracle of this comfort that I may say and that you may say, "The LORD is my shepherd, I'll not want,...! and then, more personal still, talking no more ABOUT Him, when the dark days come but then TO Him who is so close: "even when I go through the valley of the shadows of death" I do not fear, "For Thy staff and Thy rod... THEY COMFORT me....!”

And THUS it becomes true that when the disciples ask the Lord Jesus in John 9 about the man born blind if this is just PUNISHMENT to HIM or HIS PARENTS because they were EXTRA BIG SINNERS, He answers: "No, but this way God is glorified, and indeed: God can be glorified even if He deems it good NOT to heal the blindness, or the sickness, NOT to take away the trouble, but in HIS way to make YOU witness right in the middle of it, that YOU yet find power to sing:
            "Thy staff, THY rod, they comfort ME"
            "Not my will, but Thine, O Lord!"

Or with the words of Paul in Philippians 3:
            "Yea doubtless I count all things but loss
             for the excellency of "the knowledge of Jesus Christ MY LORD
             ...that I may know HIM, and the power of HIS Resurrection!"

THEN the God WHOSE I AM, and WHOM I MAY SERVE, can do miracles!  He CAN fill my hands with bounty.

Psalm 27 – not in vain, but with great confidence – says: "You wait on the Lord, BE OF GOOD COURAGE!!!  "...and He shall strengthen thy heart!"  That's how He looks after His Own!  We may leave to Him what we can't understand, and at the same time EXPECT FROM HIM all that we want and desire!  He can make us sing PSALMS in the night (Acts 16), but also He can make the prison walls break!  No more mine but His!  That's my comfort!  And that's also my program!  I have a purpose in life again to live unto Him!  He can use us, He has a task for every one of us, He is there to FILL our empty lives!

He then will also teach us HOW all this comes about.  How our misery and trouble was our SINS, our ENMITY WITH GOD!  THAT was our want; THAT was our emptiness: "What does then a living soul complain about?  Let every one complain about his sins!"  O Lord, open our eyes that we may see things in life more from YOUR point of view!  For IS this my greatest trouble, my deepest grief?  Then our eyes also will be opened for what Jesus came to do.  The glory of what your baptism told you: the washing away of your sins, the things that YOU may be sure of, the things that will take YOU a lifetime fully to see in their beauty and glory: How you became Jesus' property, How it has come about, that you and your children became safe in the arms of Jesus.  The very thing Paul, after a life of study and preaching, fell on his knees for and said: "O depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  That comfort makes one active, makes one alive, puts one in the middle of life again.  Grief makes you lonely.  But the comfort of God makes you happy, in spite of everything.  That is what God can do, what Jesus can do.  That is how powerful our Saviour is.  Might it be that God uses grief in your case so that you discover how great His power can be?

I do not know.  This is not for man to say.  But it is possible, it has been PROMISED to you, that the song of this first Lord's Day may become yours, so that YOU become a living witness in a dark world.  For in that world there might be people waiting for you.  Waiting that they hear you sing – perhaps with tears in your eyes, yet sing:
            Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine,
            Oh what a foretaste of glory divine!
            Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
            Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood!

            Perfect submission, perfect delight,
            visions of rapture now burst on my sight!
            Angels descending, bring from above
            Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

            Perfect submission, all is at rest,
            I in my Saviour am happy and blest;
            Watching and waiting, looking above,
            Fill'd with His goodness, lost in His love!                                    Amen.